House investigators said Tuesday that the computer hard drive of ex-agency official Lois Lerner — a key figure in the IRS targeting scandal — was only “scratched,” not irreparably damaged, as Americans have been led to believe.

GOP-led Ways and Means Committee investigators, in their quest to recover missing Lerner emails, learned her hard drive was damaged but recoverable by talking to IRS information-technology experts, after the government originally refused to make them available, according to the committee.

“It is unbelievable that we cannot get a simple, straight answer from the IRS about this hard drive,” said committee Chairman Dave Camp.

The Michigan Republican said the new information also raises more questions about potential criminal wrongdoing at the IRS because the committee was told no data was recoverable and the physical hard drive was recycled and potentially shredded.

In addition, learning that the hard drive was only scratched also raises questions about why the IRS refused to use outside experts to recover the data.

“In fact, in-house professionals at the IRS recommended the agency seek outside assistance in recovering the data,” the committee said Tuesday in a release.

House investigators said they also are trying to determine whether the scratch was accidental or deliberate.

“If the IRS would just come clean and tell Congress and the American people what really happened, we could put an end to this,” Camp said. “Our investigators will not stop until we find the full truth.”

Lerner was the IRS’s exempt organizations director during the period of 2009 to mid-2011 — when applications for tax-exempt status from Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations were held up for extra scrutiny.

The committee also said the information gleamed from the new interviews conflicts with a July 18 IRS court filing that states the data on the hard drive was unrecoverable — including years of missing emails.

On June 13, more than one year into the investigation, and one month after the committee was promised it would receive all of Lerner’s emails, Congress learned that potentially thousands of them, over roughly two years, were destroyed as a result of a 2011 computer crash.

The recent interviews are bolstered by former federal law-enforcement and Defense Department forensic experts also telling investigators that most of the data on a scratched drive should be recoverable, the committee said.

A declaration filed Friday by the IRS stated the agency tried but failed to recover the data. The agency also said it is not sure what happened to the hard drive, other than saying they think it was recycled, which according to the court filing means “shredded.”

The committee also said a review of internal IRS documents found Lerner’s computer was actually described as “recovered.”

The targeting to the groups applying to the IRS was made public in May 2013 by Lerner. She has since refused to testify before Congress, invoking the Fifth Amendment, and resigned in September 2013.

The IRS has turned over tens of thousands of emails to and from Lerner’s account and says it has recovered thousands of others that were lost when her government-issued computer crashed.

Democrats say there is no scandal and that Republicans are trying to turn it into an election-year issue.

Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, protested Monday about the continuing House investigations, including his committee’s plans to call IRS Commissioner John Koskinen to testify on Wednesday, for the third time over the past month.

“This public harassment of an agency head is not only an abuse of authority, but a dereliction of the committee’s obligation to conduct responsible oversight on a host of other critical issues within our jurisdiction,” he said.

Investigators also are still trying to learn whether the targeting of conservative groups was ordered by the White House.

A dramatic spike in the number of Americans with permits to carry concealed weapons coincides with an equally stark drop in violent crime, according to a new study, which Second Amendment advocates say makes the case that more guns can mean safer streets.

The study by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that 11.1 million Americans now have permits to carry concealed weapons, up from 4.5 million in 2007. The 146 percent increase has come even as both murder and violent crime rates have dropped by 22 percent.

“When you allow people to carry concealed handguns, you see changes in the behavior of criminals,” said the center’s president, John R. Lott, a Fox News contributor. “Some criminals stop committing crimes, others move on to crimes in which they don’t come into contact with victims and others actually move to areas where they have less fear of being confronted by armed victims.”

“When you allow people to carry concealed handguns, you see changes in the behavior of criminals.” – John R. Lott, Crime Prevention Research Center

Increasing gun ownership, litigation and new state laws have all contributed to the rise in concealed carry permits. In March, Illinois became the 50^th state to begin issuing concealed weapons permits. But the cost and other requirements for obtaining the permits varies greatly, from South Dakota, where a permit requires $10, a background check and no training, to Illinois, where the cost of obtaining a permit comes to more than $600 when the fee and cost of training programs are taken into account.

Six states don’t require a permit for legal gun owners to conceal their weapons, and Lott notes those states have some of the lowest violent crime rates in the nation.

The real measure of the deterrent effect of concealed carry permits, according to Lott, is not laws on the books, but the percentage of a given state’s population that holds the permits. In 10 states, more than 8 percent of adults hold concealed carry permits, and all are among the states with the lowest crime rates. Lott claims his group’s analysis shows that each one percentage point increase in the adult population holding permits brings a 1.4 percent drop in the murder rate.

“We found that the size of the drop [in crime] is directly related to the percentage of the population with permits,” Lott said.

Between 2007 and the preliminary estimates for 2013, murder rates have fallen from 5.6 to 4.4 per 100,000.

Tod Burke, a former police officer and a professor of criminal justice at Radford University, in Radford, Va., said he doesn’t buy the idea that gun permits are driving the reduction in crime. Burke said several factors, including smarter, “data-driven” policing and increased incarceration of violent criminals likely play a bigger role.

“I think we have to be cautious about having a causal relationship between gun permits and a decrease in crime,” Burke said. “[Lott’s] theory is one to consider, but not to the exclusion of others.”

The report is the first tally of concealed carry permit holders since a survey in 2011 by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that 8 million Americans held them.

The total of 11,113,013 Americans who currently hold concealed carry permits represents 4.8 percent of the total adult population. But the center stated that the number of concealed carry permit holders is likely much higher, because numbers are not available for all states that issue permits, such as New York. Additionally, four states and the majority of Montana do not require that residents have a concealed handgun permit to carry within the state, so the number of residents who carry a concealed weapon is not recorded.

Florida has the most active concealed carry permits, at nearly 1.3 million. Texas is second, at just more than 708,000, while Hawaii, at 183, has the fewest of states whose data was available.

Earlier this year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California must allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms in public, striking down the core of the state’s permit system for handguns.  The judges found in a 2-1 holding that San Diego County’s rule that residents must show “good cause” — and not merely the desire to protect themselves — to obtain a concealed-weapons permit, violated their constitutional rights.

That ruling is awaiting an en banc review by the entire circuit.

By FoxNews.com

The Lionsgate docudrama begins with a musing on what might have happened if George Washington had been killed during the Revolutionary War, leading to the erasure of Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty and other icons of Americana.

Viewers expecting an alternate history will be disappointed, since the film moves beyond that to instead look at alternate perspectives on the America that was and is. Again narrating and appearing on-camera, D’Souza talks about his past as an immigrant from India and his love for his adopted homeland.

Mixed in with these personal revelations are dramatized events from U.S. history, featuring such luminaries as Alexis de Tocqueville, a French chronicler of the infant America; Abraham Lincoln; social reformer, orator and writer Frederick Douglass; and hair-care entrepreneur and civil-rights activist Madam C.J. Walker.

D’Souza also talks to people representing ideas on the opposite end of the political spectrum from him, including linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky and former college professor Ward Churchill.

D’Souza enumerates their criticisms of the United States, such as slavery, territorial disputes with Mexico and the treatment of Native Americans. Accepting those criticisms, he then goes on to point out individuals, facts and incidents that refute the idea that American is inherently evil–in particular the viewpoints expressed in the late Howard Zinn’s popular book, A People’s History of the United States.

The result has generated mixed reviews.

Writing in the conservative National Review, national-affairs correspondent John Fund says, “Like its subject, ‘America’ isn’t perfect and its arguments aren’t always sophisticated,” but calls it “a celebration of its title subject” and worthy Fourth-of-July weekend viewing (having premiered July 30 in Los Angeles, the film hits nationwide on Wednesday, July 2).

Mainstream movie critics are divided over whether the production is “inept” (from TheWrap);  “handsome,” “well-lit” and “well-edited” (from The Daily Beast) or just “more of a bullet-point presentation than an actual film” (Indiewire).

What these three reviewers do agree on is that they don’t like it. One of the main objections seems to be that D’Souza downplays the worst excesses of slavery, what happened to the Native Americans, etc., in favor of feel-good stories and qualifiers (like, there were Irish indentured servants as well as slaves, there were black slave owners, and Native Americans warred with each other over land before Europeans ever arrived).

Of course, none of these stories negates the horrors and injustices of the past, but that’s not D’Souza’s point. Instead, he’s offering a different context in which to view them, and he’s done it before.

In 2016, he put forward a premise that Barack Obama’s personal history and education gave him an anti-colonial viewpoint more connected to his absent Kenyan-born father than to the experience of most African-Americans, and then presented arguments meant to bolster that conclusion.

In America, D’Souza talks about the “conquest ethic,” a universal human idea that the strong conquer the weak and then take what they have, without remorse. While D’Souza acknowledges America was founded under the conquest ethic and has, like nations throughout all history, fallen prey to it at times, the stories presented in the movie are meant to illustrate how the nation has resisted and transcended that ethic.

“America was birthed, unfortunately, in the conquest ethic,” director John Sullivan, who also collaborated with D’Souza on “2016,” tells Breitbart News, “but it was the first to crawl its way out of that.”

In America, D’Souza is not trying to absolve the country of its sins but rather explain how it has attempted, and is still attempting, to redeem itself from them. But, as the reviews show, not everyone will either catch that nuance or agree with it if they do.

D’Souza should, though, get credit for including interviews with people with whom he has serious political and philosophical differences. He lets them speak without trying to make them look like fools. His subjects also should get credit for being willing to sit down with him on-camera.

Explains Sullivan, “The reason why Dinesh had most of these people come on is because he had a previous relationship with them. He’d either debated them earlier or talked to them. Everybody knew who we were; there wasn’t any hiding of it or anything of that nature.

“They knew exactly who Dinesh was. We said, ‘We’re going to let you speak your point of view.’ They agreed. They knew what they were signing up for. … It is interesting that we got many of these people to sit down and give us their full-throated criticism of America.”

Another section of the movie deals with radical community organizer Saul Alinsky, author of the influential 1971 book,Rules for Radicals. 

Sullivan says some of the Alinsky clips will be new even to most who have studied him.

“We’ve got footage in there that most people had never, ever seen,” says Sullivan. “They’re from a couple of Canadian documentaries we’ve been able to dig up.”

Ironically, Alinsky is probably better known today in conservative circles than most liberal ones, since connections have been drawn between his ideas and methods and those of President Obama.

While the claim could be made that this notion is the result of speculation, as “America” illustrates in a dramatized segment, the young Hillary Rodham definitely knew of Alinsky — and had met the 60-year-old during a Methodist Church outing as a teen. It also discusses the senior thesis she wrote about him as a 21-year-old Wellesley College student, which was kept locked away during the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton.

“This will raise, for some people, questions,” says Sullivan, “as to who she really is and what her connection is, and if she’s going to be a compromiser, along the lines of Bill, or is she going to be more ideological along the lines of Barack?

“That’s the big question people people will have to see in the film and decide for themselves.”

If moviegoers are curious, this NBC News story from 2007 goes into some detail on the thesis; or, you can read it in its entirety here.

America also includes news about D’Souza himself. In May, he struck a deal and pled guilty to a charge that he used straw donors to make $20,000 in illegal campaign contributions to GOP candidate Wendy Long in 2012.

According to a May 20th story in Politico, the “unexpected guilty plea” came on the same day D’Souza’s trial was set to begin in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

This makes D’Souza a convicted felon, depriving the political commentator of his ability to vote in the future, and he could spend from 10 to 16 months in jail. The segment on the case in America doesn’t proclaim D’Souza’s innocence–in the narration, he says that he is “not above the law”–but hints he may have been singled out for prosecution without specific evidence.

And none will be forthcoming, at least in “America.” Sullivan says the resolution of the case came about late in the production of the film. So the segment is brief and light on detail.

“We felt like,” says Sullivan, “if we were to ignore it, it would be kind of odd. At the same time, it fit thematically with what was happening with that part of the movie. We finished the movie before the plea deal. We might have changed it, but given that the movie was pretty much done, edited, so there wasn’t much we could change that way.”

According to Sullivan, there won’t be any additional material on D’Souza’s legal troubles in the DVD release, but there will be additional footage of the Churchill interview.

by Kate O’Hare

With the level of the federal deficit over $17,500,000,000 (trillions), the interest on which costs Americans the first $1,300,000,000 (billion) they make every day, and the recent explosion of federal power over the citizens and the states as handed to U.S. socialists by the Supreme Court and the prolific pen of the Executive Order, the independence from government rule and tyranny sought by our Founders is all but neutralized. We and our children are indebted and imprisoned by design of a leftist attack on our country, and an Orwellian federal government spies on patriotic citizens and treats them like enemies while Islamic terrorists are welcomed into the White House and allowed to overrun territories recently liberated with the blood of thousands of Americans.

A polarization has occurred in the nation—as the left has chipped away at personal liberty and individual sovereignty over the past several decades; those who cherish freedom have finally begun to become more vocal in their resistance. But is it too little, too late?

The left has made tremendous inroads in their quest to replace King George with its own elitist panels, commissions and czars, and within the past year its inches of ground-winning have become feet.

In the name of laborer parity and elevating the ethnically or socially disadvantaged, the socialists and communists of the past century have robbed the people of the world of their birthright, established by the labor and sacrifice of their 18^th and19^th Century Forebears. In the name of pretended “fairness” leftist forces have lowered the wealth and opportunities of everyone rather than elevate the status of the less fortunate.

Look at any country where socialism and liberalism have penetrated the veil of liberty. Not one of them has improved the quality of life of their working people.

Where do we find the bottom half of earners in America? With all of the talk of the 1% and the 99% in this country, and the mindless chants of brain-dead occupiers in the streets, even an overtaxed economy like ours has rendered our own 99% the 1% of the world. Nearly all of our poor live in good housing, have clean water and food aplenty (many suffer from obesity), a computer of some kind, and cell phones and cable television. They live better than the wealthy of many of the earth’s nations.

Additionally, the tremendous generosity and military might of Americans has been the salvation of billions of people around the world, whose leftist economies have left them with nothing but squalor, want and exposure to dictators and war lords (usually leftist tyrants).

We hear of the Tea Party these days, and the name is spoken with disdain by over half of the country, and almost all of the mainstream media. Does any of them actually recall where the term originated? Do they remember how an oppressive monarch imposed taxes that were hard to bear and intruded into the personal liberties of a hardworking people, and that those people finally decided that they would take no more and rose up in rebellion, starting with throwing British tea into the harbor?

No, sadly enough, most young adults these days are the products of a dumbing-down campaign launched by the left and its educational arm, the National Education Association. They have mush for brains and their education consists of nothing more than pop culture and global warming propaganda.

We have nearly come full circle. We have hundreds of millions dependent on government and its handouts, a White House dedicated to the overthrow of the Constitution, and a Supreme Court that has decreed that the people are to be taxed even for services they DO NOT purchase at the government’s command.

King George is back, liberty has been strangled to near enslavement, and this time it will take more than a few muskets to rid us of the burgeoning oppression. America has not seen such dark times since the Civil War. I say the Civil War, because in all other wars the enemy was external. If we fail to immediately change our course, we will be irretrievably carried back under the oppression of dictatorship. We invite all liberty loving Americans to join the revolution, and to regain our independence from oppressive, centralized government.

PUBLIUS

Poor President Obama! Everyone is so mean to him!

Please.

Obama’s recent rant in Minneapolis – at what was supposed to be some sort of family picnic – was quite the classic for him. On and on he went, justifying his use of executive orders to do things for which the Constitution requires him to seek congressional approval, because “the middle class” can’t wait or something.

You see, Obama wouldn’t have to abuse his authority if these horrible Republicans would just give him everything he wants. But the problem is what he wants. He whines that they won’t pass an increase in the minimum wage, but he conveniently overlooks the fact that you destroy jobs when you arbitrarily add to the cost of labor. He moans that they won’t pass “fair pay,” but of course he can offer no explanation for what that even means, let alone how the federal government is supposed to make it happen in a relationship between private employers and private employees. He whimpers that they refused to extend unemployment benefits – after it was extended many times for many years – without mentioning that it’s only designed to last for 26 weeks and that the constant extensions have turned it into a source of long-term dependency.

And when it comes right down it, Obama’s problem is not so much with Congress as it is with the American people and with the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution gave the people the right to throw out a certain congressional majority and put in a new one. They did so in November 2010, in reaction to ill-conceived Obama policies like ObamaCare and the massive spending blowout he labeled a “stimulus” (which stimulated nothing but more debt).

Obama may think his policies are wonderful, but the voters disagreed to the extent that they were no longer willing to give him a House majority to rubber stamp everything he wanted to do. What a drag this has been for our poor, beleaguered president! He’s gone from having massive Democrat majorities in his first two years in office – which would give him anything he wanted – to now having to deal with a Republican House that, as he likes to say, chooses to “mess with him.”

Dumb voters! How could they do this to the poor president?

Maybe someone should explain to the president (who was supposedly a “constitutional law professor” at one point) that the Founders actually designed the federal government to work this way. That whole “checks and balances” thing. Constitutional Law Professor Obama doesn’t think there should be any checks on his authority, and when Congress imposes such checks regardless, Obama’s response is to take executive action for which he has no authority because “the middle class can’t wait” or something.

Oh, and to ruin people’s picnics by showing up and whining about it.

I guess this is what you get when you elect a president based mostly on the celebrity status of the individual running, which is exactly what happened when Obama was elected in 2008. It was all about his so-called star power then, and it’s still all about him today. At least as far as he’s concerned.

And that’s getting awfully embarrassing. Then again, so is the state of our economy under his leadership. If he could stop focusing however briefly on the idea that Congress is “messing with him,” maybe he could see what a mess he’s created for the rest of us.

By Herman Cain

The top U.S. official in charge of archiving federal records testified Tuesday that the IRS ran afoul of the law by neglecting to tell his office that a trove of emails from the woman at the center of the targeting scandal disappeared after an apparent hard drive crash.

Archivist of the U.S. David Ferriero, speaking before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made clear that federal agencies are supposed to report whenever their records are destroyed or even accidentally deleted. But he said that after emails from embattled IRS official Lois Lerner vanished after a computer failure in 2011, nobody told the National Archives.

“They did not follow the law,” Ferriero said.

The testimony comes as lawmakers dig for answers as to how Lerner’s emails disappeared and why they only found out about it earlier this month. Lerner herself twice has refused to answer questions before Congress, leaving lawmakers seeking answers from other officials who interacted with her or were involved in reviewing her documents.

Also on the witness panel was White House attorney Jennifer O’Connor, whom Chairman Darrell Issa compelled to testify via subpoena.

Republican lawmakers, though, struggled to get answers from O’Connor, who previously worked at the IRS, about the emails. She said she only found out the “week before last” that emails were gone.

“I didn’t hear that any of Ms. Lerner’s emails were missing,” she said.

The hearing, like several recent sessions on the IRS targeting scandal, was tense from the start.

At the beginning of the hearing, Issa accused O’Connor of being a “hostile witness” when she did not immediately answer one of his questions.

“I’m not a hostile witness,” she retorted.

“Yes, you are,” Issa said. He later clarified to say she is “non-cooperative.”

O’Connor was brought before the committee because of her work with the IRS in the latter half of 2013, when she was brought on to help the agency respond to congressional requests for documents pertaining to the IRS targeting scandal.

Her appearance itself was controversial. The White House initially blocked her from appearing. Issa then issued a subpoena late Monday, and the White House reversed course, making her available to testify.

Republicans say the White House has not been helpful in efforts to investigate the IRS scandal. “They haven’t done a damn thing to get to the truth of what happened,” House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday.

But as for O’Connor’s treatment, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., Issa’s Democratic counterpart on the committee, blasted the chairman for the “unilateral subpoena.”

“Why is she here?” Cummings asked. “It’s not because of her old job — it’s because of her new one.”

The hearing was held on the heels of a Monday night hearing before the same committee, where IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified and faced heated questions from lawmakers.

At that hearing, Issa told Kosninen: “We have a problem with you and you have a problem with credibility.”

Koskinen appeared at the rare evening session to answer questions about the lost emails from Lerner, a key figure in the committee’s probe into the agency’s targeting of conservative groups. The agency claims the emails were lost in a 2011 computer crash.

In a heated back-and-forth with Issa, Koskinen said he had fulfilled his promise to the committee to provide it with all of Lerner’s emails and that there was no way to recover ones the agency said were lost in 2011.

“If you have a magical way for me to do that, I’d be happy to hear about it,” Koskinen sarcastically told Issa.

“I’ve lost my patience with you,” Issa shot back.

By FoxNew.com

Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, Obamacare critic and New York Times best-selling author, has become a surprise top challenger to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a 2016 presidential matchup, according to a new poll.

Rasmussen Reports finds that Carson places just behind Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul as Clinton’s closest competitor. In the new poll out Monday, Clinton would beat Carson 45 percent to 38 percent and would beat Paul 46 percent to 39 percent.

The poll shows that no Republican would beat Clinton if the election were held today, but it also finds that Clinton’s majority standing has dropped and that she would get 50 percent of the vote only in a race against either Texas Gov. Rick Perry or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

If the election were held today, these would be the results:

Clinton 46 percent – Paul 39 percent.

Clinton 45 percent – Carson 38 percent.

Clinton 50 percent – Cruz 37 percent.

Clinton 50 percent – Perry 36 percent.

Clinton 47 percent – Sen. Marco Rubio 36 percent.

Clinton 47 percent – New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie 33 percent.

Paul Bedard, is the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist.

Lerner headed the IRS division that processed applications for tax-exempt status. The IRS acknowledged last year that agents had improperly scrutinized applications for tax-exempt status by tea-party and other conservative groups.

By Ron Fournier

Children with involved fathers are more likely to graduate from college—particularly among middle- and upper-income families but also among those from lower-income backgrounds, a recent study found.

According to this new research by Brad Wilcox at the University of Virginia, the family structure that best promotes this involvement is a married, intact family. This is the case for youth from lower-educated homes as well as those from more highly educated homes.

Wilcox also found fathers are more involved with their children today than they have been in the past. The amount of time fathers spend with their children each week has increased from 4.2 hours on average in 1995 to 7.3 hours on average in 2011. The down side is that fewer teens live in intact families, particularly teens from working-class and lower-income homes.

On the other hand, their peers from college-educated homes are “triply advantaged,” according to Wilcox: “They typically enjoy more economic resources, an intact family, and an involved father.”

The question then is, how to keep youth connected with their fathers, or, as Wilcox puts it, how to “bridge the fatherhood divide between children from college-educated and less-educated families.”

Increasing the odds that more children are raised in homes with their married mother and father is a crucial factor in the equation.

Today, more than  40 percent of children are born to unwed mothers. Among lower- and moderately educated (high school diploma or less) households, the number is much higher. Taking this factor into account along with the high rate of divorce, 55 percent of children are expected to spend some time outside of an intact-parent family before they reach their 18^th birthday.

Despite the trends, accepting the decline of marriage is not the answer. Marriage is critical to helping children succeed, as Wilcox’s research and a multitude of other studies attest. Marriage is the foundation of a strong society, helping men, women and children thrive.

Some communities are taking action. In his recent book, Brigham Young University professor Alan Hawkins describes a plan for helping individuals and couples build and maintain lasting, healthy marriages. As I wrote last month in Public Discourse, Hawkins makes the case that preparing for and maintaining a healthy marriage is a lifelong endeavor. His strategy includes relationship and marriage education throughout different stages of life: from helping youth in high school learn how to build healthy relationships that will prepare them for marriage down the road, to helping couples in crisis salvage their marriage if possible.

Hawkins points to examples of schools, communities and states that have taken important steps to providing opportunities to build and strengthen marriages.

For example, he points to high schools in Alabama that have taught “relationship literacy education” classes. Students who participated in these classes had more realistic attitudes about marriage and better conflict-management skills a year after participating, compared to their peers who didn’t participate. More than half of the students came from low-income households.

Additionally, First Things First in Chattanooga, Tenn., runs a “community healthy marriage initiative.” First Things First provides marriage education courses, operates public advertising campaigns about the importance of marriage and sponsors events for couples and families. They report that their efforts have reduced divorce rates in their community by nearly 30 percent (although a more rigorous evaluation is needed).

Finally, Utah and Oklahoma have taken the lead on marriage initiatives by providing marriage and relationship education to couples.

There are promising examples, yet far more is needed. As Hawkins points out, the United States must renew a culture of marriage if real change is to take place. Leaders at every level need to promote the culture of marriage.

A restoration of marriage in the United States will ensure more children have the opportunity to thrive, not only academically but when it comes to their physical and emotional health, as well as their own relationship success. Ultimately, it will mean providing a culture that gives Americans the greatest likelihood to succeed in achieving their dreams.

By Rachel Sheffield

Using his pen again in “this year of action,” President Obama today took executive actions to ease the burden of student debt at the expense of “millionaires.”

The program, “Pay as You Earn,” expands an existing federal loan option available to undergrad and graduate students. It issues caps on monthly loan payments at 10 percent of the borrower’s discretionary income and forgives their remaining balance after 20 years.

For those working in public service or the government, any remaining debt is forgiven after 10 years. An estimated 5 million more borrowers will become eligible under the new plan. Before today, only those who took out loans after 2007 were entitled to “Pay as You Earn” benefits.

To finance the program, Obama proposed closing “tax loopholes” for the wealthy, or what he called “millionaires.”

“This should be a no-brainer,” he said today at the White House. “It would be scandalous if we allowed those kinds of tax loopholes for the very, very fortunate to survive while students are having trouble just getting started in their lives.”

Carmel Martin, executive vice president for policy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress, welcomed Obama’s actions.

“Millions of federal loan borrowers—from young adults to senior citizens—are struggling to repay their student loans,” Martin said. “The steps that President Obama announced today will make it easier for borrowers to meet their obligations without the strain and worry of excessive monthly payments.”

Less celebratory was House Speaker John Boehner, who  responded with a statement saying, “Today’s much-hyped loophole closure does nothing to reduce the cost of pursuing a higher education or improve access to federal student loans, nor will it help millions of recent graduates struggling to find jobs in the Obama economy.”

Obama’s decision to bypass Congress with a presidential memorandum snubs Senate Republicans, who are debating alternative approaches they believe would address the fundamental causes of rising tuition costs. The president’s action lasts only as long as he is in office.

Instead of addressing the root of the problem, the senators argue, granting more students access to federal education subsidies gives colleges and universities the green light to continue raising tuition costs.

“Repayment caps such as those offered through IBR and other policies put no downward pressure on college prices,” said Lindsey Burke, the Will Skillman education fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “Transferring the burden of student loan financing from university graduates—who will earn significantly more over the course of a lifetime than someone with a high school diploma—to the three-quarters of taxpayers who do not hold bachelor’s degrees is inequitable.”

Obama said the financial burden of the new “Pay as You Earn” installments will fall on “millionaires,” meaning higher income taxes for higher earners. “I want Americans to pay attention to see where their lawmakers’ priorities lie here:  lower tax bills for millionaires, or lower student loan bills for the middle class.”

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told reporters at the White House that the administration doesn’t currently know how much the expanded payment cap will cost. “We’ll figure that out on the back end.”

Over the past 30 years, average tuition at a public four-year college has more than tripled, the White House said, while family income has largely remained stagnant. An analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that recent college graduates in the United States face a more challenging job market, which has left them overqualified and underemployed.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, said the president’s time would be better spent on measures to increase employment. “Republicans are ready to offer and debate our proposals to create more good jobs and to create better schools which mean better jobs,” Alexander said.

Kelsey Harkness is a news producer at The Daily Signal.

The Obama administration’s apparent miscalculation of the threat posed by Al Qaeda-aligned militants in Iraq drew severe criticism Thursday from top Republican lawmakers, who accused President Obama and his national security team of “taking a nap,” warning “the next 9/11 is in the making.”

The administration once again appears to have been caught off guard by an explosion of violence in a country U.S. forces helped liberate from a dictator.

Al Qaeda-aligned Sunni militants were advancing south and threatening to move on Baghdad on Thursday after overrunning the northern Iraq cities of Mosul and Tikrit — with Iraqi government forces in rapid retreat.

GOP lawmakers vented that advances made by the militant Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are confirming their “worst fears” about what would happen in the wake of the Obama-ordered U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011.

“What’s the president doing? Taking a nap,” House Speaker John Boehner snapped, before abruptly ending his weekly press conference on Thursday.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Iraq is “collapsing,” calling it another potential Benghazi and urging the president to address the American people.

“The next 9/11 is in the making,” Graham said.

White House and State Department officials say the Obama administration is considering sending additional aid, but have not specified what that might be. The Iraqi government reportedly is seeking U.S. airstrikes. Republican lawmakers and military analysts are urging the administration to quickly piece together a gameplan.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Thursday that the current national security team is a “failure,” urging Obama to get a “new team.” He also took a shot at Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying: “We need a new chairman.”

The escalating violence follows repeated assurances by the Obama administration that Al Qaeda is “on the run” and that its offshoots are not the threat they’re made out to be.

As recently as Monday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said of the situation in northern Iraq, “I don’t get the sense that they’re gaining a lot of territory.”

Obama also brushed off concerns about Al Qaeda affiliates during an interview with The New Yorker, in a piece published in January.

“If a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” the president said. That was in regard to concerns, at the time, that Islamist militants had taken over Fallujah — the comment also followed Islamist militants overrunning the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans.

Yet in Iraq, militants with ISIS have made considerable gains since January. (They were listed in 2004 by the State Department as a terrorist organization under their old name, Al Qaeda in Iraq, shortly after the group formed.)

Gen. Jack Keane, former Army vice chief of staff and Fox News military analyst, said the administration has not put enough effort into forming a “comprehensive strategy” to partner with governments in the region to share intelligence and battle Al Qaeda affiliates.

“This caliphate exists, and it will be the most menacing thing in the Middle East if unattended,” Keane said.

He acknowledged that the administration has “decimated” the Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan to a degree. But he said: “The fact of the matter is the Al Qaeda and its affiliates … is on the rise in the Middle East and in Africa.”

Keane also said the U.S. lost leverage with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whom Keane said needs to be saved “from himself.” U.S. lawmakers have faulted Maliki’s Shiite-led government for alienating the Sunni minority, in turn fueling tensions and giving Sunni militants an opening to exploit.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, privately, administration officials acknowledge they were caught off guard by the sudden developments in northern Iraq, where security forces abandoned their posts and militants overran key locations.

Military leaders reportedly said they thought Iraq’s forces could hold off ISIS — they were wrong.

Amid the deliberations, congressional Republicans continue to fume over the administration’s response to the terror attack in Benghazi in 2012, for which nobody has yet been brought to justice, and have launched a formal select committee investigation.

The developments also follow President Obama foreign policy speech last month at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point where he backed a policy of restraint abroad and called for a wind-down of U.S. “military adventures.”

Few expect that U.S. ground troops would be dispatched to Iraq, no matter how dire the situation becomes.

At issue now, among other things, is whether to provide more military aid and approve airstrikes. Maliki reportedly has sought U.S. airstrikes, but so far has been turned down.

A statement from the National Security Council made no commitment.

“We are not going to get into details of our diplomatic discussions but the Government of Iraq has made clear that they welcome our support in their effort to confront [ISIS],” spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said. “We have expedited shipments of military equipment since the beginning of the year, ramped up training of Iraqi Security Forces, and worked intensively to help Iraq implement a holistic approach to counter this terrorist threat.  Our assistance has been comprehensive, is continuing, and will increase.”

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, in a statement overnight, offered “condolences” to the families of those killed, but did not specify what actions the administration would take.

“The United States will stand with Iraqi leaders across the political spectrum as they forge the national unity necessary to succeed in the fight against ISIL,” he said, adding “we will also continue to provide, and as required increase, assistance to the Government of Iraq to help build Iraq’s capacity to effectively and sustainably stop [ISIS’s] efforts to wreak havoc in Iraq and the region.”

To date, the U.S. has provided considerable military assistance. The State Department said Wednesday that that has included: 300 Hellfire missiles, millions of rounds of small arms ammunition, machine guns, grenades, rifles and more. Officials say the U.S. also supplied Bell IA-407 helicopters and is set to send over F-16 fighter jets.

A statement from Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz.,; Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., blamed the current situation on the U.S. decision to withdraw all troops from Iraq.

“We call on the president to explain to Congress and the American people how he plans to address the growing threat to our homeland and our national security interests posed by the rapidly expanding Al-Qaeda safe haven in Iraq and Syria,” they said.

Hillary Clinton will likely be the next president of the United States, and why not? We live in an age of choreographed reality, and hers is among the most choreographed of lives. Also, an age of the triumph of symbol over substance and narrative over fact; an age that demonstrates the power of the contention that truth matters only to the extent people want it to matter. Mrs. Clinton’s career is testimony to these things as well.

Which brings me to the subject of her book.

However one feels about Mrs. Clinton, she was the least consequential secretary of state since William Rogers warmed the seat in the early years of the Nixon administration.

I obtained an advance copy of “Hard Choices,” her latest doorstop of a memoir, and started reading it before its publication Tuesday. There she is, bitterly regretting her vote to authorize the war in Iraq. There she is again, standing by her actions during the Benghazi debacle, insisting on the relevance of the “Innocence of Muslims” video.

Elsewhere we find her equivocating over her opposition to the Iraq surge (which, as we learned from Robert Gates’s memoir “Duty,” she privately admitted was purely political), or allowing that the Obama administration’s decision to stand silent over the stolen 2009 Iranian revolution was something she “came to regret.”

To continue reading Bret Stephens’ column in the Wall Street Journal, click here.

Bret Stephens is the deputy editorial page editor responsible for the international opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal. He also writes “Global View,” the paper’s weekly foreign-affairs column, and is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.

The largest hearing room the Senate has in the Hart Building was standing-room only on Tuesday when the Senate Judiciary Committee held its hearing on the resolution proposed by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) that would amend the First Amendment and give Congress unlimited, plenary power to restrict political speech and political activity.

In a historic and unprecedented event, both majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appeared as the first two witnesses.  They had starkly different presentations, with Reid complaining about so-called “dark money” and corporations and special interests “meddling” in congressional races.  He clearly doesn’t like the fact that Americans have the ability to criticize him and his policies.

McConnell went back to first principles, talking about the First Amendment and the fundamental importance of protecting political speech, as did Floyd Abrams, the well-known First Amendment lawyer who won the historic New York Times Co. v. Sullivan case.  As Abrams said, the purpose of this proposed amendment is clearly “limiting speech intended to affect elections.”  He observed that the title of the amendment, “Restore Democracy to the American People,” is based on the false notion that our democracy has already been lost.  According to Abrams, “the notion that democracy would be advanced – saved, ‘restored’ – by limiting speech is nothing but a perversion of the English language.”

The Democratic witnesses in favor of the amendment seemed obsessed with the Koch brothers, including a state senator from North Carolina who made bizarre claims about supposed Koch-financed efforts to implement a voter ID law to “suppress” the votes of racial minorities.

It was almost funny – Democrats can’t even hold a hearing about the First Amendment without working in their talking points about voter ID and “vote suppression.”  All of the Republican senators who spoke, including Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), made stirring statement about the importance of preserving the Bill of Rights.  I won’t summarize their statements but they are worth watching (here and here).

What was most interesting was something that happened before the hearing started that shows just how dangerous it would be to give Congress the power Udall, Reid and 39 other Democratic senators are seeking (there are 41 cosponsors of this resolution) and how they don’t believe the rules should apply to them.  I was standing in line outside the hearing room waiting to get in and get a seat.  There was a sign prominently taped to the wall where we were all standing that warned attendees of all of the things not allowed in the hearing room, like standing, shouting, applauding, and most importantly, “no signs.”

I was at the head of the line when a large cart loaded with boxes came down the hallway, accompanied by six or seven individuals, many holding protest signs like “Restore the First Amendment – Get Oil Money out of Elections” and “Big $$ out of Politics.”  The boxes had prominently pasted on their side the names of liberal advocacy groups and PACs including People for the American Way, the Daily Kos, Public Citizen, Wolf PAC, Moveon.org, the Coffee Party, and Common Cause.  The boxes were apparently full of petitions supporting Udall’s censorship amendment.  As the cart headed into the hearing room with the protest signs held high, I reminded the Democratic committee staffer supervising entry that these individuals were violating the posted rules about no signs and no protests.  She just ignored me and looked away.

About thirty photographers and reporters facing the entry started snapping pictures of the advocacy group representatives the moment they came in as the cart was trundled up to the front of the hearing room.  Several of the advocacy representatives went to sit down, but not before standing up with their signs held high and posing for more photos from the media.

I have no doubt that if I had attempted to walk into the hearing room with signs protesting this amendment, as opposed to supporting it, I would have been stopped by the committee staffer, and if I had persisted, she would have called over the Capitol policeman who was also standing at the entrance studiously not seeing the liberal protestors violating the posted rules.

It is true that Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) warned the attendees after the hearing started about no sign waiving or protests and one individual was eventually ejected; however, Leahy only did that after the cameras were turned on for anyone watching the hearing on the committee website.  It was his committee staff who, after all, allowed their supporters to come in early with their protest signs and helped to stage-manage protests prior to the start of the hearing for the benefit of the photographers in the hearing room.  You can see one of those photos here – notice there are no staffers or Capitol Police hurrying over to eject the CodePink demonstrators from the hearing room.

So it seems that some Democratic senators want to amend the Constitution so that the American people give them the power to set the rules for raising and spending money on political campaigns and independent expenditures that speak in support of, or opposition to, candidates.  However, at the very hearing at which this amendment was introduced, some of these senators were prepared to apply the Senate’s own rules to only one side of the debate.  Not something that inspires confidence that any such rules on political activity and political speech would ever be enforced in a nonpartisan, unbiased, and objective manner.

Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.  Along with John Fund, he is the coauthor of “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk” (Encounter 2012) and the upcoming “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department” (HarperCollins/Broadside June 2014).